Why Einstein Equals Musical Comedy Squared

Acclaimed science-theatre writer-performer John Hinton talks about what theatre has to offer science ahead of his new theoretical physics musical comedy ALBERT EINSTEIN: RELATIVITIVELY SPEAKING at the Edinburgh Festival.

Where better to explain the flexible nature of the universe than the theatre, where time and space are easily manipulated. Photograph: Ashley Clarke

Plato hated theatre. For him, theatre was at best a distraction from our pursuit of truth, and at worst dangerous and hubristic, since it is a double-distortion of reality: theatre imperfectly imitates life, and life in turn imperfectly imitates the reality that only philosophy can reveal to us.

While there may exist modern forms of entertainment that support Plato's view (e.g. soap operas, which purport to show us real life and instead just serve as a buttress between us and the lives we could be living), I am on a personal crusade to use theatre as a vehicle for getting to the very nub of reality.

I write solo musical comedies about scientists. Over the past four years, I've been touring internationally with my successful self-penned musical comedy about Charles Darwin. This summer at the Edinburgh Fringe I launch its follow-up – a musical comedy about Albert Einstein, called Albert Einstein: Relativitively Speaking – and yes, I have been afflicted with 'difficult-second-album' syndrome - technically known as the "sophomore slump". Ja. Wirklich.

There are many reasons why Einstein is a far harder nut to crack theatrically than Darwin. Firstly, everybody has a firm idea of Einstein's persona. Whether you like it or not, you will be expecting a character portrait which confirms your pre-conceived ideas about the tongue pulling genius with the über-cool moustache. Secondly and perhaps more significantly, the theories of relativity are so much harder to explain and distil into an hour-long piece of theatre than evolution.

Or are they? Einstein stunned the world in 1919 with the news that space and time were no longer constant and absolute, but bendable and relative. And yet, theatre practitioners have been bending space-time for many centuries without anyone batting an eyelid. To paraphrase our friend Will Shakespeare's Henry V, thirty years can fit in an hour, a battlefield can fit into a shoebox, and, should you wish it, an atom can look and sound like a human. Audiences will gladly suspend their disbelief and accept whatever new reality the play offers them.

If I want to make a new generation truly understand the weird and wonderful world that Einstein and others reveal that we live in, then what better medium to do so than a medium that teems with the very traits I'm seeking to expound?

Einstein is famous for his good humour so it was no surprise to find out that one of our peer review team – a lecturer in astrophysics at Sussex University – begins his lectures on Special Relativity with what sounds like a joke: "How do you park a 30-metre long spaceship in a 20-metre long garage?"

Einstein posited the idea that space contracts as you accelerate towards the speed of light, permitting us to observe, to use another analogy, that one gentleman's twelve inches might seem less impressive than his friend's who is standing still. To come to the first gentleman's rescue, since time is dilating as well, his two minutes will definitely feel longer than his stationary counterpart. You can't have you cake and eat it, relativitively speaking.

But I can on stage. As I've searched for ways to explain the science in my show, I've discovered that songs help. And jokes help. And mentioning sex really helps. Getting your facts right also helps which is where a good peer review team comes in. But most importantly I've found, practice what you preach: explain bent time by bending time yourself. And that's what I do in the show.

Oh and, if you were wondering, the answer to lecturer's joke is mathematical. You just have to park your spaceship into the garage at circa 75% of the speed of light. Good brakes essential.

ALBERT EINSTEIN: RELATIVITIVELY SPEAKING runs at Edinburgh's Pleasance Courtyard from 31 July – 26 August at 2.25pm (no show Tuesdays). More information here